Brains, Behavior, and Design: Applying Behavioral Economics

I took part in a workshop tonight to beta test an applied behavioral economics toolkit created by several of my colleagues at the IIT Institute of Design (the team included Ann Hintzman, Van Vuong, Miguel Cervantes, Jennifer Lee, Nikki Pfarr and Jerad Lavey). As described on the toolkit website:

In the real world, people are often irrational

Over the past few decades, researchers have codified many of the patterns that describe why people behave irrationally. As researchers, how can we be on the lookout for these patterns of behavior when we go into the field? As designers, how can we use our understanding of patterned irrational behavior to help people make better choices?

We are a group of graduate students at IIT Institute of Design working on an independent research project. We are developing tools that apply findings from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics to the design process. These tools provide a head start on framing research as well as developing new strategies for solving user problems.

I highly recommend experimenting with this helpful toolkit which can be downloaded here. And feel free to send the team feedback as they further develop this system.